As the coronavirus spreads fast outside China, dampening consumer and business sentiment, analysts continue cutting their forecasts of oil demand growth this year. In one of the latest downward revisions, Rystad Energy slashed on Thursday its global oil demand growth projection to just 500,000 bpd for this year, down from an initial pre-outbreak estimate of 1.1 million bpd, which was cut by 25 percent in February. “Our data now point to a much more pessimistic outcome, with growth likely to fall to merely 500,000 bpd, and this is assuming that the Covid-19 epidemic will largely be contained by the end of June, which in turn implies a further downside risk,” Rystad Energy said on Thursday. Rystad’s revised oil demand growth forecast comes after IHS Markit warned that oil demand in Q1 would likely register the largest decline on record, larger even than the slump that accompanied the 2008 financial […]